1. Field
The disclosure relates to a method, system, and article of manufacture for the protection of data in storage systems.
2. Background
Certain storage environments may store backup data in one or more secondary storage systems. If data is lost in a primary storage system, the backup data stored in the one or more secondary storage system may be used to recover the lost data. In certain storage environments, the primary storage system may be present in a primary storage site and the secondary storage system may be present in a secondary storage site. The primary and, secondary storage systems may also be referred to as storage systems or storage subsystems.
For example, a storage subsystem, such as the IBM* Enterprise Storage Server* (ESS), may provide a plurality of Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID) levels to ensure that availability of data is maintained even if a hard disk is damaged, and users can continue to use the storage subsystem. Furthermore, a plurality of clusters within an ESS may increase the availability of data in comparison to an ESS with a single cluster. Additionally, functions such as FlashCopy*, IBM's Metro Mirror and Global Mirror, etc., can provide increased availability of data. For example, Flashcopy can provide a point in time backup copy of data, such that even when an entire RAID rank is lost, the backup copy of the data generated by FlashCopy can be used to recover from the lost RAID rank. The above techniques may address storage resilience aspects of a storage environment. *IBM, Enterprise Storage Server, FlashCopy are trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM Corporation.
Data resident in a storage system may rely on point in time backups that may be used for recovering from a data loss. A point in time backup may have a specific time or other unique sequential entity associated with the point in time backup. For example, in certain storage systems point in time backups of data stored on a primary storage system may be made to tape storage at periodic intervals. In certain other storage systems, point in time backups may be made in real time via FlashCopy operations.
Corruption of data in storage systems may be caused by viruses, faulty input of data, execution of incorrect transactions, etc. When data is corrupted, certain storage systems may first be restored to the last point in time backup of the data before the data was corrupted. Subsequently, an attempt may be made to recreate all updates except for the update that caused the corruption, since the last point in time backup.